triggers | Ascension Lifestyle

Did you know that worrying is like a rocking chair?

It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Excessive worrying is exhausting and can become a great waste of time and energy. It puts your mind in overdrive and distracts you from doing the more important things, as well as preventing you from having a healthy, happy life.

Most people worry on a regular basis, as a natural part of life. However, the worry habit can become problematic when it becomes too intense and chronic. Some people even worry about worrying. When you are plagued by thoughts that are persistent and out of control, they end up causing interference and paralysis in your daily life.

The bad news is that constant worrying eventually takes a toll on your emotional and physical health, as well as your self-esteem, relationships, and career. When you keep hitting the panic button, the stress response is triggered, which leads to fear, then more stress and anxiety, and then more worry. An endless worry cycle is created.

The good news is that worrying is a mental habit that can be broken. You can train your brain to stay calm and remain positive. You are in charge of your thoughts and imagination. How you choose to use your mind is your responsibility. Do you continue to misuse your imagination and keep focusing on the negative or do you choose to switch to the positive?

The reason most people worry too much is often rooted in fear – ultimately a fear of something happening that cannot be controlled. When we anticipate something negative happening in the future, it is based on irrational thoughts. We are afraid of the worst-case scenario, as we have allowed our minds to wander too far on the negative side.

9 Practical Tips To Minimize Worrying

Learn to distinguish between what you can control in life and what you can’t. The things you can change need an action plan with a list of concrete steps you can take to solve the problem. And for the things you cannot change, you need to learn acceptance. The Serenity Prayer sums it up perfectly: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Recognize your trigger points. Find out the source of your worries and gain a clearer picture of what’s driving them. Your worries will start losing power, and you will start regaining control of your mind. Self-awareness is the first step to changing your mindset.
Re-frame your thoughts and change your perspective. Instead of saying, “I can’t handle this,” become more self-confident and start believing that you can handle it. Make a list of the negative messages you are feeding your mind and replace them with positive affirmations. Make sure you challenge those thoughts. No amount of worrying will make life any more predictable.
Break the worry cycle by limiting your worrying time. Schedule a worry time each day to keep the worry contained and prevent it from contaminating your whole day. Sit down for 15 minutes and make a list of all the things you want to worry about, and then proceed to worry about them. At the end of the exercise, you will come to the realization that worrying is futile. You can become more mindful of your thoughts and where you place your energy. Choose to focus on what really matters in your life and become more productive.
Get up and move. Take a 20-minute walk. Stretch out and do some yoga. Exercise is a productive activity that can interrupt your worries and shift your body’s energy. It releases endorphins, which get rid of the tension and break the cycle.
Breathing exercises, meditation and relaxation techniques also interrupt your train of thoughts and calm the body’s response to stress. This dynamic trio helps relax your body, guide your thoughts, and keep them from getting caught up in worries.
Ground yourself in the present. Become mindful of your thoughts and activities. Make time to unplug and take a look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself if what you are worrying about is really going to matter in five years from now. If not, let it go and don’t spend more than five minutes worrying about it. If it does matter, then make a list of one or two things you can do now to solve the problem. Keep in mind, you may not resolve the whole problem right then and there, but at least your thoughts will be clearer and calmer, and you will be able to move forward by focusing on what matters instead of worrying about things that don’t really matter.
Stop overthinking and dwelling on your worries by finding a healthy distraction like reading a good book, watching a funny movie, listening to great music, taking up hobbies that you enjoy, or doing something different, such as trying a new recipe.
Build a support network. Enlist the help of your trusted friends and family. By sharing your thoughts and tuning into your feelings, it can help you process them as you feel supported. In some cases, chronic worry can be a symptom of GAD or generalized anxiety disorder. You can seek the help of a therapist or join a support group. Don’t keep your worries to yourself. This will cause them to build up and become overwhelming.

Next time you catch yourself worrying, instead of pressing the panic button, reach for the pause button and ask yourself, “What’s important now?” Coach Lou Holtz came up with the acronym W.I.N. or What’s Important Now. This enables you to prioritize your decisions, choices and actions. The antidote for worrying is to maintain calm, clarity, and focus. Also, by having a grateful mind, you can look for the positive in every situation.

Strengthen your mind by learning to turn off those worrying thoughts and regain control. Look at life from a less fearful and more balanced perspective.

Original article here

As a teenager, I remember being moved almost to tears by the sound of a family member chewing muesli. A friend eating dumplings once forced me to flee the room. The noises one former housemate makes when chomping popcorn mean I have declined their invitations to the cinema for nearly 20 years.

I am not proud of myself for reacting like this – in fact, I am pretty embarrassed – but my responses feel unavoidable. It is probable that I have misophonia. According to a forthcoming scientific paper from King’s College London, so do 18% of people in the UK.

Otherwise known as “sound rage”, misophonia is “a decreased tolerance to certain sounds” says Dr Jane Gregory, a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford who co-authored the paper and counts herself among the 18%.

Sound triggers are usually repetitive, she says. It is not about “the volume of the sound or necessarily the acoustic pattern”, but what it means to the observer. Eating sounds are most commonly reported, closely followed by so-called throat sounds. (Gregory is driven spare by the sound of pigeons.)

“Chewing, crunching, snorting, sniffing, throat clearing, nose whistling, heavy breathing,” rattles off Dr Zach Rosenthal, who runs the Centre for Misophonia and Emotion Regulation at Duke university in Durham, North Carolina. “These are all relatively ordinary everyday things that people need to do, but in people with misophonia they are experienced as highly aversive.”

That “aversive reaction” can take the form of physical changes such as increased muscle tension or heart rate, or emotional responses such as irritability, shame and anxiety. It brings on a fight, flight or even a freeze response where, according to Gregory, “you get a really strong adrenaline reaction and it tells you that you’re either in danger or you’re being violated”.

Only about 14% of the UK population are aware of misophonia, according to the King’s College London paper. Perhaps one of the reasons, Gregory suggests, is simply that it is hard to talk about. “You are essentially telling someone: ‘The sound of you eating and breathing – the sounds of you keeping yourself alive – are repulsing me.’ It’s really hard to find a polite way to say that.” Maybe the movie Tár will help: its protagonist, played by Cate Blanchett, has an extreme reaction to the sound of a metronome.

Theories about how misophonia develops are exactly that. “A lot of people say they had always been a little bit sensitive to sound, but then they remember a certain time when it suddenly got a lot worse,” says Gregory. Rosenthal says it typically presents itself in late childhood or early teens and is often associated with family members. “People ask me all the time: ‘Why my family? Why my parents?’” The explanation feels comfortingly logical: “You’re not blaming, you’re not judging – you were probably just around them the most.”

You might have clocked a sibling eating baked beans, say, then once you have noticed it your brain begins to look out for it. Rosenthal describes the whirlpool: “It starts to be aversive and then I pay more attention to it, and then the more attention I pay to it the more I notice it, and then the more I notice it the more aversive it becomes …”

The impact can be severe. Gregory knows of relationships that have ended over misophonia; she has encountered people who have moved several times to escape triggering neighbours. Others must pick careers based on where they can work without being bothered by sounds. “If you don’t get any respite from it, you can get desperate,” she says.

Strategies might help, however, such as introducing background noise when eating. Gregory’s husband, who knows better than to eat Monster Munch at home, can tell if she is bothered by a sound, because she will suddenly call out: “Siri, play Taylor Swift!”

Sometimes the best option is to walk away. Gregory suggests then “slowing down your breathing, or just giving your mind a little job to do”, such as playing a game for a minute. By the time you re-enter the room, the sound might be gone, or you might feel better equipped, “because you know what’s coming”.

She also recommends “opposite action – this idea that sometimes the more we avoid something or block it out, the more harmful it feels to us. In CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy], we do the opposite of what you feel like doing.” In this vein, she tries to fight her instinct to glare at her husband, gazing adoringly at him instead: “It’s a way of tripping up your brain and saying: remember that you love this person, remember that you’re not actually in danger.”

I make a note to try this the next time I hear someone eating scrambled eggs.

Original article here

How To Worry Less And Enjoy Your Life More

Misophonia: how ‘sound rage’ destroys relationships and forces people to move home